


Nothing hurts more than nothing at all

by glim



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Battle, Comfort Sex, Haircuts, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Season/Series 02-03 Hiatus, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-09
Updated: 2011-04-09
Packaged: 2017-10-17 20:11:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/180754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glim/pseuds/glim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life in the army camp: Arthur cuts Merlin's hair and Merlin makes a promise. Set between seasons 2 and 3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing hurts more than nothing at all

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Merlin Melee Round One - Hurt/Comfort and for Team Emotional. Beta read by the darling Inspiredlife.

"You could go home, you know, instead of standing there and sighing at me." Arthur crossed his arms over his chest. "Actually, wait, no. You can't. You'd never manage."

"I could," Merlin replied and lifted his chin, suddenly serious and, for a brief moment, defiant. A drop of rain trickled down the side of his face, from his temple to the corner of his jaw, and the expression in his eyes approached sympathetic. "But I wouldn't."

"I know," Arthur said. "You'd get lost. Or distracted. Or both, in which case you'd end up..." His voice trailed off and Arthur hugged his arms to his chest more tightly. He really didn't want to think, much less talk, about what could happen to Merlin should he choose to leave the army's camp at the ragged edge of the border that separated Camelot from the northern territories.

"I'd end up?"

"In no good place."

"Because this is a good place? It's cold and rains all the time and I'm _tired_ and sore and --"

"-- and it could be worse, Merlin."

Merlin pushed his hair off his forehead with the side of his wrist. There were circles under his eyes and a tight sadness around the corners of his mouth. "Could it?"

Some evenings Arthur couldn't even imagine how it could be worse. The world around him was slowly cracking; there were jagged edges and dangerous places all around him now, not only here on the battlefield, but also back in Camelot. In the cold corridors and in his father's hollow eyes. And here, at what felt like the very end of the earth itself, Merlin's breath would catch sometimes, or his voice would crack, or the steadiness of Merlin's hand against the small of his back would waver and, for a split-second, Arthur could feel a tremble in the air.

He turned to Merlin after the quiet of the mist and rain settled between them. "It could."

"It could," Merlin agreed and touched his hand to Arthur's shoulder, sliding it down to rest at his elbow after Arthur uncrossed his arms.

Arthur glanced at him, caught the moment his eyes softened before it disappeared, and stood with Merlin for a while before the rain started to pelt down harder, lashing along the edge of the wind into their faces.

"What's really bothering you? It's not just the rain and cold, I can tell." Arthur narrowed his eyes and leaned into the touch of Merlin's hand on his arm. As soon as he did, Merlin pulled away. "Come on, what is it?"

"It's nothing."

"Nothing doesn't... doesn't look like that. Doesn't keep you up at night or make you push your food away uneaten.." Arthur reached for Merlin's hand but could only graze the tips of his fingers against the cuff of Merlin's sleeve as Merlin took another small step away from him.

"It's not anything -- not something -- we don't have to talk about it. Besides, I have to go and make sure your tent is all princely and appropriately warm and fluffy or whatever." Merlin turned to leave and head towards Arthur's camp tent, then stopped when Arthur followed and clasped his wrist. "Arthur..."

"You don't -- fine. Go. Go on. Rest if you can, I'll see you when this watch finishes."

Merlin nodded, briefly, and pushed the damp hair from his eyes once more before leaving Arthur.

*

Six months ago, Morgana had disappeared.

Five months ago, Uther had sent the army out to look for her further afield mere hours after they had returned from another unsuccessful search mission.

Three weeks ago, they arrived here at the last northern outpost, where the old walls were crumbling and the people spoke a language Arthur barely understood.

He measured time this way now, in milestones of grief, in hours of uncertainty.

More than three weeks had passed, more than six months, since some sadness, some heaviness had settled inside Merlin. He carried it in the set of his shoulders and in the tightness around his mouth and only spoke of it obliquely.

A tacit agreement existed between him and Arthur. They would only speak so much about whatever it was that had drawn Merlin into himself with a few words or touches, often in the morning before Arthur rose or at night before he came in from the evening watch.

Every time Merlin pulled away, Arthur felt that if he could have had a few more words or moments, then, perhaps, he could take some of the weight of that sadness onto himself.

*

"Sit," Arthur said, and pointed to the camp stool he'd brought out from inside his tent.

"I -- why?" Merlin eyed him suspiciously. He had a bowl of gruel in one hand and a cup of water in the other; he offered both to Arthur instead of taking the seat as Arthur indicated. "I brought your breakfast."

"Gruel? You can have it." Arthur nodded down toward the stool again and smiled his approval when Merlin finally sat. "Now, eat."

"But..."

"But what? I'll take the water, thanks."

Merlin peered up at Arthur, blinking his fringe from his eyes, and shook his head before stirring the gruel. The same gruel they'd been eating for the past few weeks. Nothing special, but it was decent -- warm and filling -- and Arthur always gave whatever extra he didn't eat to Merlin anyway. He could skip breakfast one morning. The clean, sharp feeling of hunger would be good for him.

"I get my own breakfast, you know," Merlin said around a mouthful of gruel and smiled up at Arthur. He hadn't slept last night, though he'd done a good job of pretending to do so, and it showed in his eyes.

"I know. Finish eating so you can pack up my tent. We march north again today."

*

When Merlin slept, he slept with his body curled in close to Arthur's, their breath matched up with every rise and fall. When he spent the nights awake, he'd lie on his back, Arthur's head on his chest, his fingers combing through Arthur's hair until he dozed off.

More often, lately, Arthur slept curled against Merlin and woke to find Merlin awake and as weary as he had been when they had gone to bed.

Tonight, after hours and hours of marching through the rain and the mud, he peeled off his damp clothes and sat down on Arthur's bed, amidst their collection of blankets, and tucked his head in against Arthur's shoulder with a groan.

"I'm going to rest tonight, okay? Is that... If I do that..."

"That's fine. Just try, all right?" Arthur nuzzled through Merlin's hair and breathed the scent of rain and wind mixed with that of familiar nights abed in Arthur's castle rooms. "I wish you'd tell me what was wrong."

"Me, too," Merlin replied, and for the first time, it seemed as if he might be close to doing so.

*

"Sit."

"Arthur." Merlin shoved the bowl of gruel at Arthur and stood still in front of him until Arthur took the bowl. "I already ate mine."

"You do realize that you look like a twig? Or a _mop_. Your hair, Merlin." Arthur ruffled one hand through it and remembered waking up in the middle of the night at least twice to find it tickling his nose. "I'll eat, but you have to sit."

Merlin gave one of his put-upon sighs and sat, arms crossed over his chest, and watched until Arthur finished the bowl of gruel. When he made a move to stand, Arthur rested a firm hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down.

"No, stay for a few minutes. I'm going to... you need your hair cut. You can hardly see."

"It's -- oh god. Arthur. _No_. You're not going to." Merlin shivered a bit at the idea in the grey morning light. "The barber-surgeon can do it, or I can let it grow."

"It's too long already. And do you think I'm going to let somebody else touch you?" Arthur said and realized, too late, how proprietary his voice sounded. Well. Let it be thus. He wasn't about to let anyone else take care of Merlin out here in the strange, cold, wild place they'd come to.

He combed his fingers through Merlin's hair, brushing it from his eyes and then back from his forehead and from over his ears. It was dry and soft, and with it this long Merlin looked younger than the youngest of the squires his knights had brought with them. But it got in his eyes and probably made him miserable when it was wet from the rain.

Arthur stroked it once more, then knelt down next to Merlin and reached for the shears he'd requisitioned from the barber. He set to work after dampening Merlin's hair down with water, and didn't stop until his hair was quite short, leaving the skin around his neck and ear bare and pale, and only long enough on top for the fringe to come over his forehead.

The satisfying snick of the blades as they cut through Merlin's hair transfixed Arthur; he longed for things like this now, clean, sharp things -- the ringing of horses' hooves on flagstones, the pangs of hunger, the slim line of Merlin's body relaxed against his.

He might've, possibly, gone a bit too far at one point and that had Merlin fretting at him, but after running a hand over his head, Merlin gave a small sigh of relief.

"Does it look all right? I don't look like a git, do I?"

"You look fine."

"Hm."

Arthur swept the hair from Merlin's shoulders and touched the pale skin at the back of his neck, pressed the tips of his fingers to the nape and stroked the soft, dark hair. He cupped the back of Merlin's head for a moment and, before he could have anything more than a fleeting thought of fondness or fragility, Arthur let his hand fall between Merlin's shoulders and shoved him up off the stool.

"Go on. Nobody's going to be looking at you closely enough to care." Arthur cleaned the shears off on his breeches. _Clean and sharp_ , he thought, exact, legible, a good, straight blade.

"Well. You're going to have to look at it." Merlin ran his hand over his head again, frowning when he felt how short the hair was around his ears and how bare his neck was even with his scarf wrapped around it. "I already feel chilly..."

"Don't be absurd. I like it," he added, and reached up himself to touch Merlin's hair again. "And, as you said, that's really all that matters."

"I didn't quite mean that," Merlin said, laughing, and Arthur smiled, now only wanting this fond, fragile moment to last.

*

Arthur found Merlin already in bed when he returned to his tent that night. They'd found nothing today, no sign of Cenred's troops, and the hours had stretched, tense and anxious, until darkness fell. Arthur stripped down to his tunic and breeches and curled up behind Merlin, nosing into his neck.

"I know you're awake."

"Trying to sleep," Merlin mumbled. His body pressed up against Arthur's and he sighed as Arthur slipped an arm around his waist. "I wanted to stay awake until you finished the watch tonight, though."

"That's foolish, but I appreciate it." Arthur kissed the back of Merlin's neck, then kissed him again when Merlin shuddered. He pressed another kiss behind Merlin's ear and held him tight, waited for the shiver to pass through Merlin, then settled in close. They were quiet for a long time, the rise and fall of their breath aligning, and Arthur hid his face in Merlin's shoulder before saying, "I just wish..."

"I … I know. And it's not that I don't want to."

Arthur shook his head. "What is it? What could be so bad, so vast and terrible, that you couldn't tell me?"

Merlin shuddered in his arms once more, a sound like a choked-back sob coming from deep inside him. "Could you even imagine the worst, most terrible thing?"

Of course he could. He'd been warned about it since he was a boy; he'd been taught to fear the most terrible, most dreaded thing in all of Camelot before he could talk. Merlin tensed against him and Arthur turned his face into Merlin's neck. He should've known, and maybe, in a way, he'd always known, and maybe now was not the time to put words to that knowledge and to the fear that accompanied it. "I could, and you are not it. So there must be more. And you must promise me that you'll tell me, when you can."

"I will," Merlin replied, immediately and without wavering.

"Do you promise?"

"I will. I promise."

"And I'll look after you," Arthur said. "Whoever hurt you, whatever you've lost..." Arthur's own breath caught in his throat and he pushed back the tremble that wanted to go through his body, held Merlin so tight that there was no space between them.

When he kissed the place at the back of Merlin's neck again where his hair came to a point at the nape, Arthur closed his eyes and remembered how raw and new Merlin had looked right after Arthur had cut it. He remembered the cold, grey morning and the scent of the damp earth, how his own hand had looked on Merlin's shoulder and how Merlin had touched his short hair and smiled at Arthur.

He kept kissing Merlin until Merlin eased against him once more and turned in his arms to kiss him back. Merlin still looked exhausted, wrung out from weeks and months of holding that vast, terrible grief inside him. Arthur kissed the corner of his mouth when he tried to talk and rested his forehead against Merlin's.

"As long as you stay --"

"I will. I promised that, too." Merlin shifted to rest his hand on Arthur's chest, then to unlace his tunic. He smiled the smile that only Arthur ever saw, the small one, the warm one, the one that touched his eyes more than his mouth, the one he almost always gave Arthur before he pulled off Arthur's tunic and breeches.

Merlin curled into Arthur, pressed up against him, folded himself into the warmth and protection that Arthur offered. And that was all Arthur could find himself in need of: to have Merlin as close to him as possible, to feel Merlin's bare skin against his own, to hear the thrum of Merlin's heart as he moved his mouth over Merlin's skin.

If it were an easy sort of thing, then he would take this all from Merlin, the weight of grief, the isolation of holding some unspoken knowledge inside, the pain of loss; he would shear it all off and leave Merlin light and clean and safe.

But nothing could ever be that easy, Arthur knew.

It was easy enough, however, to hold Merlin as he panted beneath him, as he arched up against him, flushed with arousal, until they were both breathless. Arthur brought Merlin off first, and brought him off fast, kissing his mouth and then kissing his neck, gasping when Merlin trembled before he came. He let his own climax build more slowly, tried to time his strokes to Merlin's quiet, sharp breaths, but lost the rhythm when Merlin's hand replaced his own on his erection.

When he was spent, Arthur took Merlin into his arms and pulled them both under the pile of blankets. They dozed tucked in around each other, Merlin's back pressed into Arthur's chest, until Merlin shifted to curl himself against Arthur's side, his head on Arthur's shoulder.

"Are you tired?"

"Mm... should we talk?"

"I don't know. Not yet?" Arthur rubbed his cheek against Merlin's short, soft hair and relished the sensation as he had the snick of the shears. "Soon?"

"Soon," Merlin agreed. His body felt warm and strong against Arthur's and he slept, soundly, long before Arthur did that night.

In the morning, they would hide their fondness behind barbed words and would let their fear and uncertainty settle into the silent places between the mist and rain and endless searching. There was a promise between them now, spoken and understood, and that would get them through this night and those to come.


End file.
